Industrial control environments can typically involve complex mechanical, electronic, electromechanical, and/or robotic machinery that perform various automated mechanical and/or electrical functions. Such machinery can include industrial motors, pumps, conveyors, escalators, drills, refrigeration systems, and so on, that can provide a particular physical output. Typically, an industrial environment utilizes one or more control devices to determine when to activate or deactivate such machinery, as well as an appropriate level of activation, (e.g., an amount of current to supply a variable input motor). Additionally, the control devices are associated with logical program code that can determine an appropriate time, degree, manner, etc., to operate such machinery based on various determinable circumstances (e.g., output of another device, reading of an optical sensor, electronic measurement such as current level in a device, movement or number of rotations of a device, and so on).
Modern control applications have become increasingly complicated. There are multiple development programs available to design software for applications that must in turn create executable code that is supported on diverse and different hardware platforms. In general, developers want to be able to offer new features to their end customers in a timely matter. If such development involves any type of customization from standard offerings provided by the development programs, the developers may be forced to request changes from OEM providers of the programs. Such requests can involve significant costs and threaten time to market. Accordingly, there is a need for a development platform that enables developers to design control solutions in a setting that efficiently facilitates code deployment and execution on different types of end hardware platforms.